Barcelona (Work) Skirt

Ok, this was one of the easiest projects I've done and it would be perfect for a beginner. You can finish it within a day if you had toddlers or say 2 hours if you had kid-free time.

I really needed a new skirt to wear to work (I'll start part time on Monday) and the Amy Butler Barcelona Skirt pattern seemed the perfect one. Don't mind my daggy home singlet.

To start off I bought some Cavalier Garberdine from Spotlight only because it reminded me of what we used for Home Tech back in high school. At $7.99per metre I couldn't go wrong, even if I did. There were more expensive versions of this black but I thought I'd stick to my budget and buy the nice stuff once I'd worked out this skirt. I totally forgot to buy a matching black invisible zipper and ended up putting a beige one. With that in mind, I thought to myself

'wouldn't it be nice to take some pics for everyone to see how I went with the zip, since it's a contrasting colour?'

So here goes... (p.s it is best to get a matching invisible zipper)

To the left are the instructions straight from Amy Butler. Very easy (tres facile) to do.

Sew in your zip and start your centre seam from where the coils end.
First, I put a small sticky dot label where the pattern indicated the end of the zip should be. You can chalk it in or use a fabric marker but I was using black fabric so sticky labels helped me here.

Next thing to do, you will need to iron your invisible zipper to open up the back part so it's flat. Do you see the two lines at the back of the coils? That's the part you iron. I would start on a low 'wool' setting so you don't burn the coils. Use your finger to push the coils down.
The picture is a bit on the side but you can still see the double row of stitch opened up and it looks squarish (if that makes sense), underneath that part are the coils.

Pin or hand baste one part of the FRONT of your zipper to the FRONT of your back panel. It doesn't matter which side you start with, as they both are the same method. It matters that you position your zipper correctly on the other back panel so it will zip up right.

I aligned the dot with the zipper end and pinned the first part of it in place. Front of zip to Front of fabric.

To start sewing down your zipper, centre your needle on your foot and sew very close to the zipper coil. The closer you are, the less you will see on the outside of the skirt.

You'll get stuck sewing when you get to the end. I only figured out later that it's best to move your zipper foot UP so it frees the space for you to sew the rest of the way down to the end where the coils finish.

Here is the left side finished and my right back panel pinned in place. These are the right sides showing. I made sure that when it's zipped up it was all correct. You don't want to be un-picking your seams.

Here is the back of my finished zipper. You can almost see the extra lines down the end.

And the zipper closed with the inner seam sewn up too.

When I tried it on at this point the waistline was too big. I could have gone down a size to small in this pattern. So I added two darts on the front. It seemed to help. I already sewed up the waistline and found the sides were too big and flowy. So this is how I took the sides in.

I lay the pattern piece on the wrong side of my skirt with the small size folded in. I re-drew in the 'small' marking line on the fabric with chalk. I repeated this step for the other side. I then sewed up these lines to take the skirt in a bit more.

The only thing left for me was to hem the bottom to knee length. There was about 10cm more that I chopped off the end as the pattern is very long. It proved to be difficult for hubby to do for me but he managed somewhat. I ironed it down trying to keep it straight, pinned it in place and sewed up the hem.

You can add a lining but I chose to omit it from this skirt.

Ta dah!!! My very own Barcelona A-Line Skirt.

I hope this helped. There are other versions here and here.